Day two started off just a bit slower than Day 1, more than likely this was due to the late wake-up call for most after Webmaster Radio’s Sponsored Bash – the city that never sleeps was living up to its nickname!

First session today, ‘Driving Mobile Traffic: SEO and PPC’. What are the key differences between desktops… this is what was explored!

Jason Wells – CEO Contact Point (logmycalls is his product). The smart features of the phone have actually made the calling features so much more valuable.

More mobile phones than toothbrushes in the world

5.1 billion own a mobile phone, 4.2 billion own a toothbrush

90 minutes on average to respond to email, 90 seconds to a text message

Roughly 48% of mobile subscribers own a smart phone

69% of those who bought in last 3 months bought a smart phone (market is growing)

Next session, SEO & Website Migrations: How to have a smooth transition – presented by seoinhouse.com. Website migrations…let the fun begin!

The whole concept was around “what’s an SEO to do throughout the lifecycle of a website project from Kickoff to Post-Launch!

Project Kickoff: Cross Training of staff members, identify what’s right with current SEO; what is the strategy to improve. (communicate often and early)

Requirements Gathering: SEOs are not typically in the meeting; Help define complete SEO requirements unrelated to project business or technical requirements. Review all business and technical requirements to ensure no conflicts.

Canonical Tags

It’s a bridge, not a band-aid, certainly not a body cast (for your entire website)

It’s a signal, not a directive for how the value of the page and to what link this value should be passed

Use when needed, avoid where possible

Specific requirements and proper uses

Pagination

Multi-faceted navigation

List ordering

Pages with tracking codes

Sites with optional parameters

Printer friendly pages

Pages with duplicate content (of course)
think of each and ensure canonical tag

What is the best way to handle /default.aspx

Recommendation: Don’t, tell programming to fix this -or- use both a 301 redirect to the homepage and a canonical tag to transfer value to the root homepage

STEAK is 120 individuals across 4 offices, focused on search/social/display paradigm. Many times work with other agencies to help clients. Mark has worked on 3 projects with Scott over the past year. Scott works for Dentsu, a traditional agency that provides both online and offline. The premise to the discussion was great, Mark is on the Search side and Scott on the Traditional… let the conversations and positioning begin!

Manage media, production, and feed budgeting in one place (don’t silo IT)

Make as much data available as you can…. early

Minimize fire drills, keep the team focused

You may not like it, but sometimes you have to be the referee

Don’t be afraid to ask the silly question

Pardon the Interruption styled debate… and their off!

SEO needs to be kept separate from media planning because it is simply isn’t media (fact/fiction)

Consultative in nature, its long term, it’s not a part of a campaign

Content wins out over links (see Panda)

SEO is extremely valuable yet the current is typically billed by the hour. It’s sometimes up to 70% of qualified traffic (if you take it to 75% it has far and away more power than any individual campaign)… Also, it is not in a media modeling tool.

SO/LO/MO – Social/Mobile/Local is the sole domain of search marketing and should be handled by digital media professionals (fact/fiction)

Should live in ‘search’ to properly attribute data and technology

These are demand driven channels; start with the customers raising their hands first.

Nether Social nor Local should be a sole digital marketer’s realm. What you are saying is critical, which is not the domain of search.

Traditional Marketing starts the conversation, Search is only there to clean up (fact/fiction)

Brands have never been built on search alone, businesses have, but not brands

Think about the Conversion funnel – search allows consumers to enter earlier, generically searching, and brands come into their consideration set earlier.

Final discussion point of the day… TRACKING (what we started with yesterday). Phone call tracking is the single most important metric that can be measured intra-channel. Mongoose Metrics is the recommended third party call tracker, mostly due to its feature set and integration with analytics.

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